Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT (1976, 109 Min)
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March 31, 2009 (XVIII:11) Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT (1976, 109 min) Directed by Larissa Shepitko Script by Yuri Klepikov and Larissa Shepitko based on the novel by Vasili Bykov Music by Alfred Shnitke Cinematography by Vladimir Chukhnov and Pavel Lebeshev Boris Plotnikov....Sotnikov Vladimir Gostyukhin....Rybak Sergei Yakovlev….village elder Lyudmila Polyakova….Demchika Viktoriya Goldentul….Basya Anatoli Solonitsyn…Portnoy, the Nazi interrogator Mariya Vinogradova….village elder’s wife Nikolai Sektimenko….Stas Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival LARISSA SHEPITKO (6 January 1938, Artyomovsk, Ukraine, Soviet Union-2 June 1979, Kalinin province, Soviet Union, auto accident ) directed 8 films and wrote 4 screenplays. The films she which are Ya pomnyu/I Remember (2006), Quiet Flows the Don directed are: Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1976), Ty i ya/You and (2006), Pervyy posle Boga (2005), The Night Is Bright (2004), Me (1971), V trinadtsatom chasu nochi/13 PM (1969, TV), Vesegonskaya volchitsa (2004), Voyna/War (2002), American Boy Nachalo nevedomogo veka/Beginning of an Unknown Era (1967, (1992), General (1992), Urga/Close to Eden (1991), segment "Rodina elektrichestva"), Krylya/Wings (1966), Avtostop/Hitch-hiking (1990), Bez solntsa/Without Sun (1987), Znoy/Heat (1963), Zhivaya voda/Living Water (1957), and Slepoy Moonzund (1987), Levsha/The Left-Hander (1986), Skakal kazak kukhar/The Blind Cook (1956). cherez dolinu (1986), Zina-Zinulya (1986), Magistral (1983), Belyy voron/The White Crow (1981), Rodnik/The Spring (1981), BORIS PLOTNIKOV (2 April 1949, Nevyansk, Sverdlovsk Predvaritelnoye rassledovaniye/Preliminary Investigation (1978), province, Soviet Union) has 28 acting credits, some of which are Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), and Moya sudba (1970). Pushkin: Poslednyaya duel (2006), Lavina (2001), Sverchok za ochagom (2001), Progulka po eshafotu (1992), Igra v smert, ili ANATOLI SOLONITSYN (30 August 1934, Nizhny Tagil, Soviet postoronniy/A Game Called Death, or the Intruder (1991), Union—11 June 1982, Moscow) has 35 acting credits, including Gambrinus (1990), Sobachye serdtse/Heart of a Dog (1988), Ostanovilsya poyezd/The Train Has Stopped (1982), Dvadtsat Kholodnoe leto pyatdesyat tretego/Cold Summer of 1953 (1987), shest dney iz zhizni Dostoevskogo/Twenty Six Days from the Life of Pervaya vstrecha - poslednyaya vstrecha/First Encounter – Last Dostoyevsky (1981), Agoniya/Rasputin (1981), Muzhiki!/Peasants Encounter (1987), Gobseck (1987), Vremya synovey/The Time of (1981), Stalker (1979), Telokhranitel/The Bodyguard (1979), Sons (1986), Lermontov (1986), Dve glavy iz semeynoy khroniki Povorot/The Turning Point (1978), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1983), Dikaya okhota korolya Stakha/Savage Hunt of King Stakh (1977), Doverie/Trust (1976), Legenda o Tile/The Legend of Till (1979), Yemelyan Pugachyov (1978), and Voskhozhdeniye/The Ullenspiegl (1976), Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975), Ascent (1977). Vozdukhoplavatel/The Balloonist (1975), Svoy sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoy sredi svoikh/Friends Among Strangers, Stranger Among VLADIMIR GOSTYUKHIN (10 March 1946, Sverdlovsk, Soviet Friends (1974), Solyaris (1972), Prints i nishchiy/The Prince and Union, now Yekateinburg, Russia) has 58 acting credits, some of Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—2 the Pauper (1972), Proverka na dorogakh/Checkpoint (1971), and tyrannies and resistance to real change in silence, but when Abakir Andrey Rublyov (1966). strikes a woman, Kemal swings his tractor around and drives it within inches of the older man’s face. Beaten, Abakir leaves the VLADIMIR CHUKHNOV (10 April 1946—2 June 1979) has 7 collective, watched by the silent and impassive peasants as he cinematography credits: Proshchanie/Farewell (1983), Stakan packs his possessions and viciously smashes the radio his vody/A Glass of Water (1979), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), comrades had given him. The struggle between old and new is V chetverg i bolshe nikogda/On Thursday and Never Again (1977), examined in different terms in the character of the peasant girl Vylet zaderzhivayetsya/Flight Is Postponed (1974), Dom dlya Kalipa (Y. Yusupzhanova), striving to free herself from the dead Serafima (1973), and Semeynoe schaste/Family Happiness (1970). hand of patriarchal customs and religious tradition. Shepitko always managed to surround herself with collaborators of PAVEL LEBESHEV (15 February 1940, Moscow—23 February exceptional talent. Here she had the services of cinematographer 2003, Moscow) has 45 cinematography credits, including Stara Yuri Sokol and the composer (and future director) Tolomush basn. Kiedy slonce bylo bogiem (2003), Azazel (2002), Nezhnyy Okeyev, whose soundtrack ingeniously mixes music, voices, and vozrast/Tender Age (2000), Chek (2000), Mama/Mummy (1999), natural sounds. The cast was headed by two Kirgizians, Sibirskiy tsiryulnik/The Barber of Siberia (1998), Kavkazskiy Nurmukhan Zhanturin as Abakir and Bolot Shamsiev, then a plennik/Prisoner of the Mountains (1996), Privet, duralei!/Hello, fellow student of Shepitko’s at VGIK, later a director himself, as Fools! (1996), Grekh. Istoriya strasti/Sin: A Story of Passion Kemal. (1993), Nastya (1993), Es ist nicht leicht ein Gott zu sein (1990), In his article about the director in Films and Filming (March Mordashka/Pretty Face (1990), Rebro Adama/Adam’s Rib (1990), 1974), Derek Elley wrote: “Shepitko’s concern...has consistently Sukiny deti/Son of Bitches (1990), Zapretnaya zona/Forbidden been the clash of old and new....This sense of people acting out Zone (1988), Bez svideteley/Without Witness (1983), Neskolko their fortunes under the gaze of a greater and predetermining force dney iz zhizni I.I. Oblomova (1980), Pyat vecherov/Five Evenings is given its clearest expression in her first feature. The setting of (1979), Voskhozhdeniye/The Ascent (1977), Raba lyubvi/A Slave of man against the open sky achieves a double effect: not only is the Love (1976), V trinadtsatom chasu nochi/13 PM (1969), and struggle between Kemal and Abakir made to seem particularly Nachalo nevedomogo veka/Beginning of an Unknown Era (1967). naked, but also its shows that man’s struggle is not only with himself....Shepitko breathes her own particular spirit into the from World Film Directors V II. Ed. John Wakeman. situation, managing to depict the departure of the old in the face of H.H.Wilson Co. NY 1988 the new...with a striking lack of propagandising...[and] Shepitko, Larissa (1939-July 2, 1979), Soviet considerable sympathy is shown for the director, was born in the small city of established order, the old ethics of the beys, Artemovsk in the Eastern Ukraine. At the age of despite the fact that the system is finally shown to sixteen she went to Moscow to take the be unworkable ....Visually, the film is admission examinations for VGIK, the state magnificent: the play of sun and cloud on corn; film school. There she became a pupil of the the value set on water in this arid part of Central great Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko. Asia....There is a toughness, however, in the After his death in 1956 Shepitko worked with lyricism which prevents the film from foundering his widow, Yulia Solntseva, on Poema o more in its 84 minutes.” (Poem of the Sea, 1958), the first part of a Clare Kitson agreed that “the images have an trilogy about Ukrainian village life that had extraordinary intensity, the heat seeming to drive been planned and scripted by Dovzhenko. human relationships to their breaking point.” After that Shepitko made two student Shepitko’s extraordinary skill in relating shorts, The Blind Cook (1961), a satire, and landscape to character—both as shaping influence Living Water (1962). The latter is said to have and challenge—reminded Elley not only of her been in the nature of a tribute to Dovzhenko, reflecting his lyrical mentor, Dovzhenko, but also of the early work of Leni Riefenstahl. style. Shepitko’s diploma film and first feature followed: Znoi This first feature won a special jury prize at Karlovy Vary and was (Heat, 1963), made when she was only twenty-two. The picture very warmly received in the Soviet Union itself. After completing was produced at Frunze, a small but enterprising studio in the the films, Shepitko left the Frunze Studio for the capital, spending Kirgiz Republic in Soviet Central Asia, near the Chinese border. the rest of her career at the Mosfilm Studio. Conditions on location were very difficult. The temperature at With her second feature, Krylya (Wings, 1966), Shepitko times reached such levels (up to 120º F) that the film stock melted. turned to a contemporary urban theme. Moving back and forth On the treeless Kirgizian steppes there was no shade except where between past and present, the story deals with four days in the life shelters could be constructed, and Shepitko herself fell ill. She of Nadezdha Petrovna (convincingly played by the little-known went on working, nevertheless, even when she had to be carried on Maya Bulgatova). She is a respected member of her city’s Soviet location on a stretcher, and head of a college of civil engineering. In Word War II, Heat was adapted from “The Camel’s Eye,” a story by Kirgiz however, she had been a much-decorated fighter pilot and a writer Chingiz Aitmatov, set in the mid-1950s. Kemal, a national heroine. Secretly she is consumed with nostalgia for those seventeen-year-old member of the Party youth organization, great days and envy of those who can still enjoy the freedom of the arrives as an idealistic volunteer on a collective farm in the skies. Moreover, if her peers admire her, her students find her sweltering steppeland. Soon he finds himself in conflict with narrow-minded, heartless, and authoritarian, And so does her only Abakir, who jealously protects his authority and his reputation as daughter Tanya (Zhanna Bolotova), whose immersion in a love the region’s best tractor driver. Kemal suffers Abakir’s petty affair is something Nadezhda can hardly comprehend. In the end Larissa Shepitko, VOSKHODZDENIE/THE ASCENT—3 Nadezdha comes to recognize that her stern values are crisis”—a failure of faith in his work, in his unsatisfactory inappropriate in the postwar world, but it is not entirely clear marriage, and in himself.